A telephonist at the RUC's headquarters in Derry warned a man to stay away from the march which led to Bloody Sunday because paratroopers were "coming in and coming in shooting", the Saville inquiry heard yesterday.

Charles McDaid said the warning, passed to his wife, came from an anonymous phone caller, who was later identified as Jean Manning.

Mr McDaid told the inquiry that the message, which came on the morning of the march, said: "Tell junior [Mr McDaid] not to go to the march because the paras are coming in and coming in shooting, and others have been informed." Later, the caller made herself known to him. She has since died.

In a statement to the inquiry, which is investigating the killings of 13 unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry on January 30 1972, Mr McDaid said that some people he expected to see on the march were conspicuous by their absence. They included John Hume, now leader of the SDLP.

Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the inquiry, also read out part of a statement to the inquiry by Mr Hume in which he said he had spoken out against the march, deciding well in advance not to attend it.

Lord Saville asked Mr McDaid to consider "very carefully indeed" a request to give names of possible IRA members to the inquiry, in confidence. "It would then be a matter for those people to decide whether or not, if they had anything to do with Bloody Sunday, they wanted to remain anonymous."

Earlier, a resident, Dermot Carlin, told the inquiry that he had been pointed out by one soldier to another. After Mr Carlin responded to cries to help Damien Donaghey, who had been wounded by gunfire, this second soldier directed his rifle at him.

Mr Donaghey, 15, was shot along with John Johnston, 59, on the fringe of Derry's Bogside area. Mr Johnston died five months later.

Another witness, Patrick O'Carolan, said he had always wondered why these two residents were shot. "I could not understand [the shooting of] Mr Johnston - his age and his appearance, why anybody would want to shoot him, because he would not be a danger to anybody."